UNITED STATES
Pete Seeger dies at 94
Folk singer and political and environmental activist Pete Seeger has died at a hospital in New York City at age 94. Seeger’s grandson, Kitama Cahill-Jackson, says Seeger died on Monday night after being hospitalized for six days. Seeger was the son of Juilliard School of Music teachers — his father was an ethnomusicologist and his mother a violinist. He dropped out of Harvard University in 1938 and took his banjo on the road. Seeger and Woody Guthrie started the Almanac Singers in the early 1940s and in 1948 he helped form the quartet The Weavers. He helped create the modern American folk music movement and continued to perform and record music for the next six decades. However, his politics got him blacklisted in the 1950s and he was kept off US television for more than a decade. He was still an activist as recently as October 2011 when he marched in New York as part of the Occupy Wall Street protests. He co-wrote such song as If I Had a Hammer, Where Have All the Flowers Gone? and Turn! Turn! Turn! He was a founder of Clearwater, a group to clean up the Hudson River in New York state, and also wrote children’s books. His wife, Toshi Seeger, who he married in 1941, died last year.
UNITED STATES
Paintings to be auctioned
Four Old Masters stolen by the Nazis, including reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, go under the hammer in New York this week where they are expected to fetch up to US$1 million, Sotheby’s said on Monday. The paintings looted after the 1940 fall of France were returned to their owners in 1946 by the Monuments Men, the allied organization responsible for protecting treasures during World War II. Sotheby’s said two of the works still bear scrawls from the Nazis that document their stolen origin. Under the hammer as a single lot valued at US$300,000 to US$500,000 are a pair of paintings by 18th-century French painter Jean-Baptiste Pater that were pilfered for Goering’s private collection from the French branch of the Rothschild banking dynasty after the fall of France in 1940. For US$150,000 to US$200,000 Sotheby’s is offering a 15th-century panel, Triumph of Marcus Furius Camillus by Apollonio di Giovanni, also stolen from the French Rothschilds. The fourth painting is a view of Venice by 18th-century painter Francesco Guardi, valued at US$200,000 to US$300,000.
ITALY
Police hunt for papal relic
Police are searching a mountain area beloved by former pope John Paul II for a stolen relic bearing his blood. Vatican Radio has decried the “sacrilegious theft” from tiny San Pietro della Ienca church near the Gran Sasso part of the Apennine Mountains, where John Paul used to hike and ski. Carabinieri Colonel Andrea Ronchey in nearby L’Aquila said on Monday that the relic — a bit of blood-soaked cloth kept inside a painted metal cross — was last seen on Thursday last week before the church was closed because of a snowstorm. The cloth, which reportedly comes from the robe the pontiff was wearing when he was shot in an assassination attempt in 1981, is enclosed in a gold and glass circular case. The framed cloth was given to the small church in 2011 by Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who served as John Paul II’s personal secretary until his death in 2005. John Paul had celebrated Mass in the church. The former pope is to be named a saint during a Vatican ceremony on April 27, along with pope John XXIII.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese